Virmond Park, Mequon, WI
Letter #77: I have 4 days of vacation ahead of me, so allow me to spill out my latest journal entries. ❤️
04/13/24
For many reasons it’s taken me years to articulate, life in a suburb never felt like me. I never felt fully alive, fully activated.
I was most in touch with my sense of imagination when myself, my brothers, and our best friends (who also happened to be our neighbors), were running rampant down Riverside Road, weaving our play in and out of the woods that connected the land behind our homes. We’d make up games, tearing down the length of our dead-end street that ran parallel to the Milwaukee river, slipping in and out of the tree line until our parents called us home for dinner, well after the sun began to set.
We made up stories, crafted makeshift tree forts, and dreamed of building a raft where we could one day float down the river to the city below. Growing up around that much nature…well I can’t think of anything more magical than that.
But as I grew into an adult, I stopped playing outside. My free time was categorized into something productive or something indulgent in escapism. Rarely did I find myself outside for hours on end, with zero agenda.
I began to spend money, and, if I left the house, that was the main destination—to spend money.
Endless offerings of big box stores constructed within only the past decade streamed by along the road only a few miles from my home. Endless driving down those straight line, suburban highways, pulling into huge parking lots to follow others into and out of the stores, filling plastic bags to the brim with items I didn’t really need. And then starting the engine again towards home, hoping whatever was in that bag would light up something in me that conjured that same blissful feeling from playing in the woods when I was a child.
The security and predictability of life in a suburb where even the restaurants offer a reliable level of sameness, resulted in my imagination being stifled. Driving with the windows open in the summer time, Pearl Jam blasting from the speakers, and making art at school were, that I can recall, two of the only ways I felt most alive as I grew older—where I felt most myself. The sense that I could keep driving towards somewhere I’d never been before, or that I could craft something with my hands that had never before been created by the hands of man.
But isn’t this the American Dream? Safety, dependency, sameness? A secure house, the same groceries every week, people that looked like and acted like you? Convenience within every direction? Ease. Abundance. What was it about this that made me scream inside? Don’t I desire a life of ease and comfort?
Why do some of us want to run away from this consistency into the blissful abyss of the unknown in order to feel lit up from within? Why do some of us choose calculated risk, failure, discomfort, and a general sense of not belonging to feel most at home in ourselves?
(I write these words with the recognition of my privilege in expressing this behind a veil of an American middle-to-upper-middle-class, white, heteronormative, conservative upbringing. This is not the reality and indulgent questioning of many Americans, and of many living in countries with far fewer freedoms).
When we’re born, is there just a chemical makeup that designated some of us to dream up a life of ease and uniformity? And others of us to choose chaotic, uncharted paths throughout our time in the world?
It wasn’t until the past year (during my 37th year of life and a self-funded trip around the world) that I felt that contentedness I had in childhood. I wasn’t spending hours outside playing, but I was outside most the day, every day, having my meals, reading, writing, and hanging with friends.
Being surrounded by homogenous structures that promised a certain level of comfort, while forsaking the trees and wildlife that once stood there, I realized, made me feel trapped. I long for homes built of stone and wood, a history dating back to a time I would have zero comprehension of. And if I couldn’t have those antiquated, wooded surroundings, then I felt lit up by living in the extreme opposite—a pulsating city where the sheer amount of diversity, opportunity, and overstimulation had my head spinning.
It’s been rejuvenating being back in Mequon for a while. My self-care hasn’t been this consistent for a while. I lean into the structure and routine of my days, and I don’t overextend myself. But I also know something lies dormant inside of me. I’m not myself here. I’m going through the motions of life, but I am not fully living, stretching to the edges of my being. If I had married the wrong person, if I had stayed in a place that didn’t feel like me, if I had had kids and followed the preordained path set out in front of me, I know that a large part of what makes me “me”, would’ve died. Or never lived.
Not a day goes by that I could my blessings for taking the risks and committing to a life of unpredictability that, at times, leads to failure. At least I am able to fully feel, a spectrum of good and bad, rather than choose a lifestyle that quells my inner fire.
And while I can appreciate the predictable, pastoral lifestyle of the suburbs that brings peace to so many lives—I know that I must always keep the promise of adventure on the horizon so I do not lose the self I’ve worked so many years to find.
I wrote these words while basking in the sun on the bluffs above Lake Michigan, in Virmond Park, a spot in my hometown. Now I type them out on my laptop, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in an AirBnB I rented in Augusta, Sicily, for the next few days. I’m writing this out while binge-reading the memoir of Safiya Sinclair called How to Say Babylon, her true life account of growing up with a patriarchal Rastafarian father in an impoverished Jamaican childhood, surrounded by the haunts of colonialism that never left that land. To even recount the words I wrote over a month ago feels self-indulgent and tone deaf, especially in light of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in their native land—that which my family living in Laqiya bears witness to. It is a conflicting time for a very free, very privileged American to travel and not feel an overwhelming guilt about exploring a world unknown to her, but known in an often traumatizing way for so many others. And yet I recognize how much I want to understand my own feelings, my new experiences against what I learn about both the joy and struggle of others, and how I can continue to cultivate the perspective by which I view the world. And, so, as I continue to write, it will be a reflection of my own experience, but with an eagerness and humility to understand what those around me are experiencing at the same time, no matter how closely related or not they are.
Hey! Would you like to connect over creativity, self-growth, and problem-solving? Please book a time on my Calendly for us to chat! I can’t wait to see you. XOXO.
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Very cool, Heather! Also thought-provoking. And hmm, I guess “the apple CAN fall a little far from the tree”😆😆
Wow, beautiful ❣️🫂